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Sunday, 11 November 2012

There appears to be some kind of curse on me and phones

Okay, so by now you will all be aware of the ridiculousness of me and the mobile phones in my life.

I am currently functioning on two iphones due to the mistakes I make with them, one of them has a sim card but Lord Voldemort made me drop it and now you can't see the screen. I have got around this by learning how to use the phone without actually seeing what I'm doing. The main way in which I have learnt to do this is to use Siri to call all the people needed. This is all well and good and tends to work okay, however there are occasions like last Thursday when I asked to ring Oldest-Friend-Cafrin and Siri put me through to Kathleen instead... that always leads to interesting conversations when people answer the phone and ask who you are because you haven't called them in years and so they no longer have your number and you act shocked because the person on the other end of the phone does not sound like the person you wanted to call at all so the conversation usually ends up like:

Other person: Hello?Me: ...Um, hello?Other person: Who is this? Me: ... Who's this? Other person: You called me!Me: I know, but I don't think I meant to.Other person: What? Me: I'm a little confused right now. Other person:You're confused? Me: Sorry about this. Other person:Who are you??Me: Who am I? WHO ARE YOU??

But that's only occasionally. 35% of the time I get the right person. The rest of the time Siri tells me he's having a problem or is unavailable and then I have to deal with my problems of feeling rejected by the only man I have ever felt comfortable enough to call on without throwing up over them due to commitment issues.

Anywho. That's phone number 1. Phone number 2 is the iphone I used to use before I got phone number 1. It's an iphone 3G and to say it's been a little abused is an understatement. I basically use it as a glorified ipod touch. You see, since getting the iphone 4S I upgraded to a mini sim card that doesn't like to be used in any other phone other than my iphone 4S. As such, I can't use my iphone 3G as my real phone but I can use it for games, the occasional text from iphone to iphone when in possession of wifi access and camera usage when I'm in a place that doesn't require a flash... oh and also the occasional tweet when I'm again in possession of wifi access. Mainly I use it to play mahjong, The Simpsons Tapped Out, and Jurassic Park.

Back to the abuse I mentioned. This phone has half the glass missing from the top of the screen and cracks running through the rest of the glass in every which way you can possibly imagine. It has been dropped a few times in the course of it's long and gruelling life with me. However, the screen still works which is a vast improvement on phone number 1 so it tends to go everywhere with me anyway.

Which brings me to the thing in question that has made me write this post. You see, the most annoying part of having a working iphone 4S with a broken screen is that I will get an influx of texts, hear that I have these texts, and not be able to do a damn thing about them. I do occasionally shout at the screen with words along the lines of

"WHY ARE YOU TEXTING ME WHEN I CAN'T READ THE TEXTS? I'M JUST GOING TO COME ACROSS AS RUDE AND SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T LOVE YOU BECAUSE I CAN'T RESPOND. WHY DOES THE WORLD NOT KNOW THAT I DON'T HAVE THE ABILITY TO READ TEXTS THAT IT SENDS ME?"

But on the other occasions I may be in places where shouting the above words would make me come across as 'weird' or 'a person of concern' to a passing policeman or psychiatrist (you think that sounds implausible but I work in a mental health hospital which is where apparently a lot of Psychiatrists like to hang out and get money). On these occasions I might ask Siri if he can read me the text, in the vain hope that he has learnt how to do this since the last time I asked him. He never has. I swear that man is so lazy.

It also forces me to ask others with the iphone 4S if I might borrow it to put my sim card in so that I can read a few texts or just send out a mass text that says, 'I can't read your texts people, please stop sending me them'. However, I have yet to ask a person that has said yes to this, including my own family.

I was out for a meal with Marmie, The-Father and Older-Brother-Glyn a few weeks ago and I asked them if I might be able to borrow either The-Father or Older-Brother-Glyn's phone so that I might be able to know what it feels like to have a working phone again. However, I was met with a great deal of reluctance. In fact they bother just said No and then hid their phones from me for the remainder of the meal. Apparently I can't be trusted for even five minutes at a restaurant table, in their full sight, with one of their phones. I found this a little over the top and harsh... until last Tuesday.

I was on the train, listening to phone number 2 as it also serves as a good source for playing music. I was sitting on the train and my stop came up. I got up and made the usual fight through the mass of people on the train to get to the doors before they decided to shut and force me to ride to the next station.

I had been successful right to the door as there had been a woman in front of me leading the way and I simply slipped into the path that she was paving away. However, just as I got to the door, I felt a snag on my earphones. A man, right in the doorway had decided to wear buttons that day. Who does that? Anyway, the earphones caught on the button and before I could salvage the situation, my iphone was dislodged from my pocket.

I watched it fall. Like it was in slow motion. I heard the people around me gasp and swear as they too saw it. Out my pocket it came, down it fell, past the other people standing, past the actual train itself as it managed to find it's way through the small gap between the train and the platform. It went down and down until it landed on the small bit of ground next to the track. I just stood there gobsmacked. I had made it to the platform, a few others were staring as well, most were just trying to get on the train.

A woman tapped me on the shoulder. "Go get one of the men that work here, they have a device that can pick it up."

I had approximately two minutes before the next train arrived, that is if this current train didn't trample it to death when it left the platform. I watched the train leave, luckily it didn't touch my phone. I felt a little hope within me and went on the search for this mysterious working man with the even more mysterious device, hoping that it might be something mystical and glowing.

I walked up and down the ridiculously long platform, (seriously, why do they build them so long?) I found no one. Another train was approaching, I could hear it and I could also feel my stomach about to heave up it's contents. The train came, I couldn't even bring myself to check on it. Instead I closed my eyes tight, crossed everything that I could possibly cross, sent out a desperate prayer and then made my journey up the stairs to the main entrance, which would mean another five trains would pass before I would be able to come back down with a man and his magical device.

There was an option 2 that I almost went with which was just jumping down and grabbing it, but due to the chance of death for the sake of not having a crushed phone, I decided that my family and loved ones might have preferred I find the magic man first.

It felt like the longest journey ever finding this man. It didn't help that my imagination had gone into overdrive and I was trying to convince myself that I wasn't in fact on a quest to look for a hobbit type creature with a magical golden staff...

I eventually found a man who was actually pretty ordinary looking for what I expected, he was normal sized and wearing the same uniform I've seen all the working people at the train stations wear... I was a little disappointed if I'm perfectly honest. Trying not to show my disappointment, I explained my situation and he went with me back down to the platform where the incident occurred. I still had hope for the device, imagining the latest in technology that could cause objects to levitate in front of our very eyes.

We get there and have to wait as another two trains go by. Apparently this man couldn't actually get my phone, he had just walked me down in case I got lost? I don't know, maybe he just wanted to see the magical device at work.

Eventually, after the second train left the station and, as far as I could tell, my phone still seemed to be intact. Another depressingly normal sized man in depressingly normal looking clothing turned up with his device.

It was a sodding stick for picking up rubbish. What an anti-climax.

Not to mention, the man dropped the phone after attempting to pick it up once and then, when he did get the phone up to the platform, instead of placing the phone carefully down on the platform floor where I could then pick it up, or even placing it my hands, the man noticed a paper that had been thrown on the platform floor under a bench. He became incredibly excited by this fact and threw my phone onto the platform floor with gusto as he (and I'm not exaggerating here) pounced on the paper to pick it up with his rather boring looking device.

I wasn't too sure how to react to this, on one hand he had just saved my phone from death by train, on the other hand, he might have caused more damage by throwing it on the platform floor. Do I say thanks? Do I complain and blame all the cracks on the screen on him in the vague hope that he buys me a new one?

I was so flustered and confused I went to my default British move which was politeness in all causes. I muttered a thanks and walked off.

There you have it. I should not be allowed near phones. Especially as I have bought a new screen for phone number 1 on ebay and received it to realise that I bought a white screen for a black phone... hmmmmm. Ah well, it will be unique. I just need to get it fixed on now...